Johnson: Darrell Wood and Crazy Dog find a home

I caught up with him in a far corner of Garden Grove Park last Monday. He was seated, listening to his transistor radio, his old dog seated comfortably in the bicycle trailer, chewing on a ramen noodle box.

So many people wanted to help the homeless man and his 16-year-old dog in the week since I wrote about him.

There were offers of financial help, of dog food. Veterinarians called as well, each offering to take a look at Crazy Dog for free. Yet how do you pass along any of these offers of help to a man who has no phone and sleeps nights curled up with his dog in alleyways or behind Dumpsters?

People want to help you, I told Wood as we sat across from each other at a picnic table.

"I need a place to stay, that's for sure," he said between bites from a can of fruit cocktail. "That's the one thing I need."

It was the first time I had ever heard the man, who has been homeless for a little more than one year, ask for anything.

He looked different. Yes, he was clean-shaven. His once-filthy clothes appeared to have been laundered. Even Crazy Dog had a different luster about her.

People who had read of him came to the park, he said. One couple rented him a room for three nights at a nearby Motel 6.

"That was awesome. I got a bath, a shave. Even my dog got a bath. And I watched the Super Bowl. It couldn't have gotten better than that."

He was back at the park, which on this day was filled with men setting up stages, booths and rides for the coming Tet festival there. The workers and police officers have politely told him and the other homeless men and women that it would be a good idea if they disappeared for awhile.

How can I let these people help you? I asked him seemingly 50 times. He just shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't expect anyone to have a magic wand and, 'Click!' I'm somewhere else," Wood said. "Those people who came and helped me, they restored my faith in people. But maybe there is no happy ending for me."

For reasons I still do not understand, I decided to call the last person who had called about Wood. I had written his name and number down in the notebook I was using. His name was Jim.

He owned a construction paving business, Jim said when I called.

He had read of Wood and Crazy Dog, that he looked in the newspaper like a good man to him. If he has a clean background, he said, he'd be willing to get him a trailer for him and the dog to live in, that maybe he could find him some suitable work. I told Jim I would be right over.

"That would be fantastic," Wood said when I relayed Jim's offer. "But I'll believe it when I see it. I'm not distrusting anyone, but opportunities like that are few and far between."

I pulled into the parking lot in the shadow of the 57 Freeway in Anaheim, and walked into the well appointed offices of J.B. Bostick Co., one of the largest asphalt paving contractors in southern California. Jim turned out to be Jim Bostick, 67, the owner, who started the business in 1969 with, as he put it, "just $1,675 in my pocket and an old GMC pickup.

"This is just a thinking thing," he said in a deep Southern accent, "to see if this could work."

He walked me around his huge construction lot, past huge paving machines, pickups and dump trucks, to a yard beyond a mobile trailer. He pointed to a spot where a big, yellow front-loader was parked. He would put the trailer there.

"He can be our eyes and ears at night," Bostick said. "If things go well, it might all work into a job here, something to get him back on his feet."

The obvious question was, why?

"He needs help," he said flatly. "I've been blessed. I came here from a farm in Kentucky that had nothing, no running water – nothing. I know what it's like to have nothing. This is about a person. In the South, we were all raised help each other, to care about each other and to make things happen."

It will take some time finding the trailer, he said. Would I mind, he asked, finding Wood a hotel room? His company will pay for it, he said. Just have them call, he said, handing me his business card.

I am not really believing any of this, yet drive back to the park and find Wood. He and his dog are fast asleep under a tree.

Pack up your stuff, I tell him. What hotel do you like staying at?

"Motel 6," he quickly replies. "It's dog-friendly."

He rides his bicycle, Crazy Dog tucked into the rear trailer, over to the motel. J.B. Bostick Co. has, indeed, paid for a week.

Darrell Wood looked as though he was about to cry as I bid him farewell and he closed his room door.

It is a little after 1 p.m. on Friday when Jim Bostick pulls his truck into the motel parking lot. He has brought his brother, Carl, with him. They have, it turns out, just come from purchasing a 26-foot, one bedroom trailer for Wood. Both men shake the formerly homeless man's hand.

"How does all of this sound to you?" Jim Bostick asks Wood.

"It sounds right up my alley, sir," he replies, "just what I need."

He looks completely different, even from earlier in the week. His hair is freshly cut. His face is shaven.

Dan Karella, the 80-year-old man who introduced me to Wood and has basically taken care of him and Crazy Dog since last summer, on Thursday finally got Wood to sit for the haircut and shave he had purchased for him weeks ago.

The men sit and talk for awhile. Bostick tells Wood that the trailer should be delivered sometime this weekend, that the company will provide bedding, put some food in the refrigerator, get him a television and cell phone. He will also buy for him a bullhorn, Bostick said – that eyes-and-ears-at-night thing.

"You hear anything at night, you get on that thing and then get the hell out of there," Bostick tells him.

"We just want you to get yourself comfortable and familiar with things," he adds. "We don't know where this thing is going to go. I think we'll do OK."

The men shake hands.

"I feel like I'm close to the end of an awful tunnel," Darrell Wood tells me when I bid him goodbye. "I'm close to feeling good, really good about myself."